Lincoln Ellsworth's father, James, a wealthy coal man from the United States, spent US$100,000 to fund Roald Amundsen's 1925 attempt to fly from Svalbard to the North Pole. Two Dornier Wal flying boats, the N24 and N25, attempted to reach the North Pole on May 21. When one airplane lost power both made forced landings and, as a result, became separated. It took 3 days for the crews to regroup and 7 take off attempts before they were able to return N25 to the air 28 days later. Ellsworth senior died in Italy on June 2, 1925 while waiting for news of his lost son.

In early March 1926, under the headline "Across the Pole by Dirigible," the New York Times announced the Amundsen-Ellsworth Expedition.[1] A long article in the same edition (by Fitzhugh Green, one of Byrd's navy colleagues) was headed "Massed Attack On Polar Region Begins Soon."[1] Ellsworth accompanied Amundsen on his second effort to fly over the Pole in the airship Norge, designed and piloted by the Italian engineer Umberto Nobile, in a flight from Svalbard to Alaska. On May 12, the Geographic North Pole was sighted.

Ellsworth made four expeditions to Antarctica between 1933 and 1939, using as his aircraft transporter and base a former Norwegian herring boat that he named Wyatt Earp after his hero.[2]

On November 23, 1935, Ellsworth discovered the Ellsworth Mountains of Antarctica when he made a trans-Antarctic flight from Dundee Island to the Ross Ice Shelf. He gave the descriptive name Sentinel Range, which was later named for the northern half of the Ellsworth Mountains. During the flight, his aircraft ran out of fuel, forcing a landing near the Little America camp established by Richard Byrd. Because of a faulty radio, he and his pilot, Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, were unable to notify authorities about the landing. The two men were declared missing, and the British research ship Discovery sailed from Melbourne, Australia [3] on a search mission. The two men were discovered January 16, 1936, after almost two months alone at Little America.[4] They returned to New York City on April 6, and their support ship, the MS Wyatt Earp, arrived separately two weeks later.[5]

In 1928, Ellsworth was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal that honored both his 1925 and 1926 polar flights. Eight years later in 1936 he was awarded a second medal, for "his claims on behalf of the United States of approximately 350,000 square miles in Antarctica and for his 2,500-mile aerial survey of the heart of Antarctica."[8] He thus became one of only four people to be awarded two Congressional Gold Medals. The Antarctic base Ellsworth Station was named after him. In 1937 he was awarded the Patron's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his improvements in the technique of polar aerial navigation. [9]